


Count to Five Before You Pull the Trigger

by vtn



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Jayne disarmed River, and one time she disarmed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count to Five Before You Pull the Trigger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/gifts).



> Dear anr, I was so delighted to see that you shipped River/Jayne in your signup, especially since I think we share all of the same favorite headcanon. They are my favorite pairing. I love their dynamic and all of the different ways they interact, and I hope I was able to capture some of it here.

**1.** She’s holding a gun again, and if his instincts were fast before, this time they’re even faster now he knows what she’s capable of. He pulls it away from her, gets her on the ground, and ejects the cartridge. 

He cocks his chin up at her limp, shaking body, lying prone on the deck of the Serenity.

“How’s you even get this? Gorram it, girl, you’re going to kill us all if I ever take my eyes off you.” 

She keeps her face to the floor and says it so quiet he can hardly hear: “You never really look at me anyway.”

Whatever the hell that means. Crazy girl.

  


**2.** “And now you’re dead.” Jayne points the empty rifle at River, who he has backed into a corner.

She sighs, dropping her arms to her sides, and walks toward him. Jayne waves the gun over his head, laughing while she jumps to reach and starts giggling like a kid herself.

“No fair! Tallest one shouldn’t get to win every time.”

“I ain’t beating you ‘cause I’m tall, I’m beating you ‘cause I’m better at sparring,” he says. “But it is pretty gorram funny how short you are.” What is she, like five foot? 

Then she looks serious for a second, moving her hand in the air between them like she’s touching a wall or something. “You’re still scared of me, though,” she says. 

“Maybe ‘cause you’re crazy and could snap and murder me at any minute,” Jayne snaps back. She tosses her head to the side, still scowling, then breaks into a grin.

“Just like I’m going to next round!” she says, jumping high enough to snatch the rifle from him and climb up onto one of Serenity’s catwalks. “High ground wins!”

  


**3.** Serenity needs some repairs, or so Kaylee says, going off in her usual way with mechanic talk Jayne can’t make heads or tails of. All he knows is their landings have been rocky lately and it ain’t River’s flying, not with the way she looks so stern when she grips the controls.

“Well, we’re in the right place,” says Jayne to the captain. He tells Mal where to land and Mal passes it on to River.

They thump down out by the sheep pastures, in a muddy fallow field. It’s real hot out, and muggy. Jayne laces up his boots tight and spits in his hand to slick down his hair. 

“Jayne is nervous,” says River, still looking at the readouts. “What is this place to him?”

“To me? It’s home,” he says, simple as that. She turns around and her face is as confused as he’s ever seen her, like a scared deer.

His uncle Mack goes out to the junkyard with Kaylee to see if they have the right parts for Serenity, and the rest of them stay on the homestead. It looks smaller than it used to. He didn’t have to worry how the crew would get along with his folks. While his ma fusses over him and tells him he needs to eat more, the little kids all gather round and ask for treats and stories from out in the black. They ain’t got much to give them but Jayne’s folks are simple; they don’t ask for much.

One of the boy cousins, a kid named Fry with his toes poking out of his boots, wants shooting lessons so Jayne takes him out to the field at the edge of the woods. River tags along, saying it’ll be another lesson for her too.

“Where’d you get that dress?” he asks her as she marches along beside him, trying to keep pace with his longer strides. It’s just an old rag she’s wearing, but there’s something weird about the way she’s dressed up.

“They gave it to me at the homestead,” she says, looking almost shy as she grips onto the skirt in her fists. It’s some blue fabric with little flowers on it. But now he sees what’s weird: it’s his ma made it. “I was too hot before.” She tugs at the low collar of the dress and he laughs a little thinking of her trying to take off her pants in front of everyone the way she sometimes does on the ship. His family ain’t used to the ways people start acting when they’re always stuck so close together. They don’t have much out on the homestead but they have space at least.

“This your girl, Jayne?” Fry asks him.

“Ha! Load your gun, kid, and mind your own business.”

Jayne shows him how to aim. The kid’s got a quick draw but he can’t sit still once he’s got a target. 

“Tin cans ain’t gonna go anywhere,” Jayne says, leaning his elbow on Fry’s shoulder to stop him squirming. “Now count to five before you pull the trigger.”

In the background he hears River counting with funny fractions or something. Then Fry shoots and all the cans fall down. Jayne laughs out loud and claps him on the shoulder. 

“Well look at that!”

“It ain’t me,” Fry says, dumbstruck. “It’s your girl hit them.”

“She ain’t my--” Jayne starts but he shuts his mouth because now he’s thinking on what she had to do to hit all those cans. 

River walks across the field and sets up some more cans. Then she goes over to Fry and messes with his arm, pushes up on his chin a little. 

“First of all, your form is very unrefined,” she says. “Second, Jayne is right, you need to take time before a shot. Third, this is simple kinematics. You can estimate the muzzle velocity of this type of rifle at approximately one thousand meters per second. Given the mass of the shot you’re using…” Blah blah blah. Jayne heaves a sigh. Off she goes again.

“Look,” he says to her. “Quit talkin’ so fancy. You’re just acting like you think you’re better than my family, now quit it.”

Her face looks like she isn’t sure what expression to make. She chews up her bottom lip. 

“It’s just what I know. That’s the way it is inside my head.” She closes her eyes. “I can’t do it all instinct like you do. Not unless--no.”

He knows what she means. Not unless she goes all brainwashed assassin on them. She could snap and kill either of them if that happens.

“What am I going to do with you?” he says to try and break the discomforting silence that’s come over them.

“Keep teaching me,” she says, sounding real honest, looking right at him.

Jayne clears his throat. “All right, both of you. So, to get a good aim, you’re gonna want to…”

\---

Kaylee’s still working on Serenity after the sun goes down, so they decide to put up camp for the night. A couple of Jayne’s brothers start a bonfire and one of the little girls lights it, gasping and running away as the whole thing goes up. Everyone laughs and they roast some meat and corn on the fire and bring out some of the homebrew from the cellar. It’s the kind of feast they can only have once a year or so. Jayne supposes it’s a special enough occasion. Someone’s even brought out a fiddle and a banjo and a washboard to keep time, so now there’s dancing too. He watches the boys blush and the girls spin in their skirts and it makes him feel...old.

River’s blushing too, when the dance is done and she runs back across the field in her bare feet. It takes him a minute to realize why she’s swaying.

“You’re drunk!” he says, laughing out loud. 

“I don’t like it,” she says, clutching her head, but she’s still laughing. “But I do. It feels...happy and crazy. Maybe I am crazy after all. Jayne, can you stop the ground? I’m not dancing anymore but it’s still spinning.” He just laughs and laughs as she sinks down and lays on the grass with her hair all around her head.

“Jayne is just like us,” she says, a little quieter now, rolling onto her back and staring up at the stars. “He takes care of his people. That’s what we do too. Simon and me and my crew. My new family. It’s just this is Jayne’s family, not us.”

“I’m right here,” he says, a little offended.

“But it makes sense,” she goes on. “It’s Jayne’s people. Not too much thoughts in their head that make everything confusing. Jayne’s people are smart too, but it’s just…. You just know what you have to know. People think about dancing and farming and drinking, and what happens tomorrow, and not next year or next century.”

She’s quiet a little longer and then she says, “Are you going to leave us?”

“What?” Jayne laughs again. “Hell no. I hate it here.”

“Do you?” She rolls onto her front now, looks up at him. “Your thoughts are all happy and funny thoughts. You feel like you’re at home. Jayne can be Jayne.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Then he feels like he’ll have to explain himself. “But tomorrow will come around and then the next day and I’ll get that itch again, to leave here and go where there’s money, and bars with real beer, and more too shoot than turkey fowl and sick old sheep.”

“I like the home brew,” River says. “Or maybe I don’t. Too many bubbles. But I’m floating.” She kicks her feet up in the air, her skirt falling around her waist, and he shouts at her to put her legs back down. 

“Are you worried everyone will see?” she says, giggling. “Or just you?”

“Aw, hell.” He rubs his face with his hand. “What I mean to say is, quit messing around in my head. It makes a man feel defensive.” 

She keeps on laughing and laughing. “What does he have to hide?”

“Girl, there’s a lot in my head you’ve got no business seeing.” 

“I’m not afraid of you,” she taunts him. “I’m not scared.” She picks herself up and lays across his lap. “Your thoughts can’t hurt me.” 

“Careful now.” He thinks of Fry asking if she’s his girl and now he feels all hot. He can see the sweat on the skin of her chest and watches it drip down below the collar of that dress of his ma’s. She ain’t a kid anymore. “There’s no telling what I might do.”

“He won’t do anything, because he’s too scared of her,” River says. She shuts her eyes. Her face looks a little sad.

That’s when one of his girl cousins whaps him on the side of his head. 

“Jayne, what are you doing fooling around with girls in the dark? Get up and sit with your folks like an honest man!”

“Hell, you’re drunk too, Dara,” he says as he starts to recognize her. Last time he was here she was twelve and climbing trees with the boys, not wearing skirts and rubbing color on her cheeks. “All right,” he says with a groan, and gently nudges River off his legs. “I’ll go,” and he walks back toward his family.

  


**4.** Jayne thinks River is trying to start something. She’s been hanging around him more while she’s not flying the ship, sometimes quiet, sometimes asking him questions. They’re not just sparring partners anymore. He thinks crazy as it seems she might want to be his friend.

“Aren’t you supposed to hate me?” he finally asks her one day while she’s chewing on a protein bar and watching him clean his guns.

“I’ve seen the other Jayne now,” she answers through a mouthful. “He’s not so bad even though he doesn’t dance.” That’s when he knows she means seeing him on the homestead.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s only one of me,” he says. “You don’t get to pick and choose the parts of me you like.”

“Maybe I like all the parts of you,” she says, and she looks at him like she has to know what she’s saying. It’s making him feel hot again, and this time there’s no one there to keep his wants in check.

“Only one way to find out,” he says. He grabs her and kisses her. And oh hell, her doctor brother’s going to murder him in his sleep, but it’s good. She kisses like the farm girls, soft under his mouth, and he wants more.

But she pulls away with a look of complete surprise on her face. Well, that’s not the best reaction he’s ever gotten but hell, it ain’t the worst.

“That bad, huh?” he asks her.

“No, very good,” she says, touching her mouth. “New. And not what I expected. But now I know what I wanted.”

She goes in and kisses him again.

“But,” she says, “I think I need more practice.”

“That would be a new and interesting lesson for our sparring matches,” Jayne says, trying to keep his composure. He hasn’t got much left.

“I need a lesson plan and curriculum,” she says. She kisses him again right on the side of his mouth.

“Well, I’ll work on it, but no promises.” He wraps an arm around her; she’s small and quivering in the crook of his elbow. “Here’s a start.” He slips his hand up the side of her neck and dips her head back and kisses her like he means it.

  


**~~5.~~ 1.** River Tam hits him like a tornado. She’s the only person on this boat more insatiable than he is, and now whenever she’s off her shift or they’re not doing weapons training she’s in his bunk. He doesn’t get a moment of peace but gorram--he loves it.

Her brother doesn’t take it well, naturally. He gets twitchy as hell when he sees the two of them together but what’s he going to do? Jayne just has to give him the right look and he looks like he’s about to soil himself. So he doesn’t get murdered.

That’s not what disarms him though.

They’re staying onworld, after selling some fresh cow’s milk butter they picked up in payment for some vaccines they delivered. The day got late and they were flush, so they went out drinking and shooting pool, and got a room on the top floor of the saloon. Jayne proudly fended off the flirtations of one of the dancing girls and went to work on his frustration with River. 

Now the two of them are lying in bed, and River as usual is starting to get a little handsy with him again. One of the first things he learned in the school of Tam is that there’s no rolling over and going back to sleep.

He sighs. “Sometimes I wish I could read your mind, girl,” he says.

“You wouldn’t want to know,” she says, with an edge to her voice.

“Try me.” 

The way she looks up at him is yet another reminder that she’s fully in possession of her faculties. At least right now. It goes straight to his stomach, and maybe some other places.

“Well,” she says, running a hand down her chest, over her belly. “What would you think about having children?”

Like he’s been shot, he nearly falls out of the bed, and she’s just laughing, and laughing.


End file.
